Friday, January 20, 2012

Damien Hirst

This is kind of old news by now, but one of the big sensations of the last week or two has been Damien Hirst's exhibition of his spot paintings.  Make that exhibitions.  Hirst has simultaneously installed his spot paintings in eleven galleries in eight cities--all branches of the Gagosian Gallery.

http://www.gagosian.com/


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/arts/design/damien-hirsts-spot-paintings-at-gagosian-in-eight-cities.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=damien%20hirst&st=cse

 If you don't know much about Hirst, do a quick google. You'll see that he is an art world provocateur whose work is often engaged with death. Is it spiritual?  Or incredibly crass?

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/h/hirst/hirst_piggy.jpg.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God

The work is absurdist.  Could it be understood as a critique of extremist consumerism and the obscene wealth of many art collectors?  Or does it participate uncritically in the decadence of the superrich?

Hirst is a canny marketer of his own work.  He forces us to acknowledge how the artist's persona generates buzz and market value...and art historical relevance. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/sep/13/damienhirst.art

Overwhelmed?  Confused?  Bored?  Angry?  Let YouTube artist Hennessy Youngman break it down for you.  (Youngman is a topic for another time...).

http://hyperallergic.com/44980/hennessy-youngman-damie-hirst/


5 comments:

  1. The name Damien Hirst did not ring any bells for me at first. Once I clicked on “This little piggy” I remembered who he was and what he is known for. That NY Times review by Roberta Smith was brutal and the Robert Hughes article was worse. I read Hughes’ “The Shock of the New” for Dr. Tracy’s 20th century class. When an artist does not live up to Hughes’ standards, he definitely lets you know how little he thinks of them. I enjoy reading the opinionated views of art instead of the bland treatment of survey books that present everything with equal importance. The bias of the writer is often more interesting than the object they are writing about.

    I have studied simple-minded, pretentious, and decadent work in Dr. Kelly’s 17th and 18th century courses. If Hirst is, as Roberta Smith and Robert Hughes believes, an unimaginative self-promoter… he is in good company. If these critics are so passionate about an artist, there must be something there. There is a dark side to the art world and Hirst’s work touches an exposed nerve. Everyone complains about it, but no one seems to be doing something to fix it. Whether it is performance art on the morality of the art market or a long con conducted by Hirst to inflate the value of his work, the art world needs to address the “Hirst experience”. There is a market for his items and instead of calling his patrons tasteless, maybe critics should take a closer look at the void his work seems to fill.

    I loved that Hennessy Youngman video… my new hero.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I completely agree with the idea that Hirst's work does form quite a strong, opinionated views and is very subjective. It keeps me interested to form my own feelings about this experience rather than sucking up to the dry articles of bland surveys. In this modern world, what sells is what is marketable and he envisions that and breaks it down for us why. Morality of art is no longer the bigger factor in the market and I'm glad that it can be that way.

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Damien Hirst is a man who's ego is only surpassed by the amount of money people are willing to pay for his work. Mostly his work consists of found objects put into a context which Hirst creates, and his infamous dots (boring!). To think that this man has somehow figured out a way to make pieces that will be consumed by the media has a lot to do with his personality than the excellence of his work. He uses dead animals and skulls to somehow loosely connect the viewer with their own mortality. I think his dots are just as uninformative as his found objects and with works being this subjective, they end up leaving the viewer to create any meaning to the works, Damien almost leaves himself so far removed from the works that it's hard to call him an artist. Most Artist's create work to give the world their point of view and, Damien Hirst has the point of view of a businessman, creating work that is marketable but boring.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BTW the youtube video of Hennessy Youngman was hilarious, amazing and so true. Love him.

      Delete